Last gathering before summer break

RSVP to Jeanne! Important....

I just wanted to let you know that we have a reservation for our last Book Club meeting of the season on Tuesday, June 9 at the Thai Orchid restaurant in Itaewon. 12 Noon. (2nd floor across the street from the International Clinic)
We have a private room reserved, so will be able to have our discussion of the No 1 Detective agency as well as discussion and decisions on what books to read next year. Don't forget to bring your final book suggestions. Diane will send out a list to look over soon.

As is the nature of the meals in a Thai restaurant, everyone shares the dishes, so we will take the total food bill and divide it equally among everyone. We can ask that drinks be on a separate tab, so we can pay for our own, as some may want wine or beer, and others are happy with water or tea.

Please let me know if you plan to attend so we can have the table set accordingly. Hope to see you all there.

Roseann's home address

Hope that you all have read this wonderful ***** book. (five star)
Book-club will be at my house on Tuesday at 1 PM. I live very close to the Hyatt hotel and I have about 4 spaces for parking. I will also have some light things to eat for lunch so come hungry, of course there will be lots of wine! Please send me a quick note if you can make it!

when: tuesday 12
time: 1:00 PM
where: Roseann's home

atonement from a tormented reader!

Where: Roseann Rhoda's (her home is near PISHON restaurant by the HYATT, almost)
When: Tuesday, May 12, at 1:00 pm.

We will be discussing Ian McEwan's Atonement. We will also start considering book choices for next year. Please bring your recommendations (not more than two books per person). You should have already read the books you are recommending or have heard strong recommendations from reliable sources for these books. We will make the final selections for next year's books at our June meeting (the last meeting of the year in our book club). Remember that we strive for a variety of genres in nonfiction and fiction--classics, memoirs, biographies, novels, etc., as well as authors of different nationalities.

Looking for possible discussion questions about the book, I came across an excerpt from an interview with Ian McEwan about Atonement. Please consider McEwan's view of the purpose and the value of the Novel in light of your reading. This is an interesting point for us to consider as we near the end of this year's Book Club:

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

from www.whsmith.co.uk

Briony’s writing is seen as a way for her to exercise a level of control over her life. What do you personally consider to be the purpose of the Novel?
"I think, of all literary forms, and perhaps of all artistic forms, it is the most adept at showing us what it is like to be someone else. The novel is famously good at revealing, through various literary conventions, a train of thought, or a state of mind. You can live inside somebody else's head. Within one novel you can live inside many different people's heads, in a way that you of course cannot do in normal life. I think that quality of penetration into other consciousnesses lies at the heart of its moral quest. Knowing, or sensing what it's like to be someone else I think is at the foundations of morality. I don't think the novel is particularly good or interesting when it instructs us how to live, so I don't think of it as moral in that sense. But certainly when it shows us intimately, from the inside, other people, it then does extend our sensibilities. It is also, as form, very good at marking out that relationship between the individual and a society, or the working out of a relationship – the interpersonal is very much its subject. Atonement, in particular for me, has been about the description of a character, particularly Briony. I think she is perhaps my fullest invention, as a person - deeply flawed and yet I hope still sympathetic."


Finally, I am hoping that one of you will step forward as the next coordinator of the Book Club. I am leaving Seoul on June 20, so it's coming down to the wire. Remember, if I can do it, anyone can do it!